


Heat Pray Love

by Wiggle



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe, Happy Ending, M/M, Non-Traditional Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Omega Bucky Barnes, Omega Steve Rogers, Porn with Feelings, The Holiday Movie Challenge, but nearby, neighbour universe
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:19:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21947953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wiggle/pseuds/Wiggle
Summary: Inclement weather grounds all flights on the East coast. Now, one genius billionaire and two super soldier omegas must share the last car out of LaGuardia.Circumstances conspire to add a little... Heat.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers, James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers/Tony Stark, James "Bucky" Barnes/Tony Stark
Comments: 11
Kudos: 81





	Heat Pray Love

A solid thud echoed from somewhere ahead of him, kicking up a wave of dust and debris. If Steve smashed through any more walls, this place wasn't going to remain standing.

With another shower of detritus and pulverized cement cascading over him, Bucky took in the destruction of the old storehouse they’d found the creatures in. The spider-machine hybrids were a nuisance more than a threat, but Bucky was still glad it was almost over. Aside from Steve’s new additions, the dust was finally settling, and most of the SHIELD agents were removing themselves from the scene. The only sounds remaining came from collapsing walls, the thrum of Steve’s shield, and his racing footsteps. An ancient stone staircase, still standing, gave Bucky somewhere to sit while he pulled out an apple and waited for his friend wear himself out. 

From his perch he was able to maintain reasonable sight lines on Steve. There was no reason to expect anything to go awry at this late stage, but Bucky had seen too many ‘cleared’ battlefields flare back into fighting to take that chance. Mostly he just tried to stay out of the way. Occasionally, the shield would careen past followed shortly after by Steve’s own careening form. Harsh breathing filled the air in between the fleshy impact of fist against spider thing.

There was a grunt, Steve failing to find satisfaction as his fist finally worked its way through the partially mechanical carapace. Whatever these spider things were, they weren’t sentient as far as SHIELD could determine. The animated life forms didn’t think or strategize or present much of a threat. Which, given Steve’s recent… peculiarities, was likely the reason he was treating this like a personal vendetta. Bucky looked around at the destruction while he gently carved out a slice from his apple to the soundtrack of Steve engaged in mayhem and property damage. 

Not much of the interior was left standing. A wall that Bucky strongly suspected was load bearing looked like it might collapse if anyone so much as whistled. The room was covered in the gray-black remnants of the creatures they’d managed to track back here.

There was another slam and, a few seconds later, two forms thudded to the ground in front of Bucky. He shifted slightly to minimize the impact on his snack.

Something had been happening with Steve for the last several weeks. He’d had even more energy than usual and without frequent, aggressive, activity to work it off, he became short-tempered and irritable. He was no longer satisfied with fights that went smoothly or with quick in and out jobs where no one knew they were there. If Steve didn’t get to blow off a little steam in a brawl then… well, no one’s life was as content as it used to be.

Bucky cut another slice out of his apple. He didn’t like the theories the doctors had come up with so far. He didn’t like a lot of what they learned about their bodies post-serum. Bucky not liking something was a running theme in his life. Steve was acting notably out of character, or more accurately, really strongly to only half of his character traits. Bucky was just sitting around trying to make sure that Steve didn’t get too carried away.

He’d thought they wouldn’t have to worry about that, but...

That last thud of Steve’s shield into the concrete didn’t even carry the sound of flesh with it anymore. There wasn’t enough left.

… there was growing evidence to the contrary.

Steve looked like he’d good and wrung himself out. Despite that, breathing harsh and cheeks flushed, he looked around as if seeking something else to throw himself at.

“Uh uhn, nope,” Bucky said, springing to his feet, grabbing Steve up under one arm, and hauling him into a standing position. “You’ve had enough. Just breathe through it, Stevie, and let’s head to the debrief and leave the cleanup to the others. You don’t want ‘em to lose their jobs do you?” 

Steve looked at Bucky like he didn’t know where he’d come from. 

Bucky rolled his eyes. They really needed a solution to whatever this was. 

Bucky hustled Steve onto the exfil plane’s extended loading ramp and finished his apple before tossing the core out the back hatch.

Watching the partially collapsed warehouse disappear behind the closing loading bay door, he sighed. Behind him, Steve stomped his displeasure into the industrial grating. The plane echoed with his irritation. He held back another sigh. This was going to involve a lot more sitting on his part. Maybe he could grab something more substantial to eat while he waited for the inevitable blowup.

\-----

They were back inside SHIELD in under two hours. Steve hadn’t sat down the entirety of the return trip and Bucky was tired of seeing him pace. Now that he’d spent the last thirty minutes staring at Fury’s office door, he’d eagerly trade back to watching Steve wear a trench into the floor of the jet. Anything other than relentlessly beige walls and the sounds of Steve and Fury fighting.

The crescendo had become a familiar one and Bucky was predicting the end of proceedings in Three…

“That’s enough!” Fury shouted loud enough to be heard clearly through the doorway. “Medical, Rogers, _now_.”

Two…

“Sir, if you think-”

One.

“I said _now, Captain_ , and I better not see you again for at least a week.”

Boom.

The door to Fury’s office sprang open. The wall was mercifully spared it’s abuse by some bright thinking SHIELD agent. After three weeks of patching the thing up, someone had gotten clever and installed a regen brake. Now, whenever Steve’s overclocked strength sent the thing swinging, the brake provided resistance and gathered up Steve’s spent energy to use as electricity for something somewhere else in the building.

“So,” Bucky said, trying to cut off Steve’s inevitable complaints, “medical then dinner?”

Helpfully, his stomach growled. Steve looked like he wanted to growl a bit too. Instead, he took pity on his friend. Sighing, he dragged his fingers through his hair - the disarray it was in suggested this was far from the first time. “Yeah, _medical_.”

Oh the _venom_ in that. 

Another twenty minutes of staring, this time at the institutional white walls of the SHIELD medical wing, and he was probably almost as fed up with whatever was happening to Steve as Steve was himself. It wasn’t until Steve was being ushered towards him, several white lab coats in tow, that Bucky was met with a pleasant variation to his routine.

“Barnes,” the doctor said. Bucky wasn’t sure what _he_ had done wrong. Why were they using that tone on him? “We have a theory as to why Captain Rogers has been behaving… erratically recently.” 

Steve made a sullen grumble at that, painfully reminding Bucky of when they’d been teenagers. Eighty _years_ ago.

“Without Captain Rogers’ permission, I cannot disclose the reason-”

Steve sighed - once again not unlike the teenagers they hadn’t been in almost a century. Waving a hand in Bucky’s direction, he said, “It’s fine, just… get it over with.”

“The Captain is being taken off his suppressants. We’re speaking to you about it because we need to ensure that you neither provide him with your own medication-” Bucky wanted to protest, but… he probably would if Steve asked him. Steve would probably accidentally start a mutiny before it ever occurred to him ask though. “-but also because we can’t know the greater repercussions. There have been instances where one omega in a close pod has pulled other omegas into their heat cycle. We have no reason to expect that here, it rarely happens without a committed alpha, and you, of course, will be staying on your medication for the foreseeable future?”

The end turned up in a question and he nodded. He hated having heats, hated the uncertainty, the indignity, the… the pain. Nope. No _thank you_ , he was never going off them if he could help it.

Bucky would have liked a little more Q&A, a timeline, _something_ , but Steve was already looking mutinous. Once they were out of earshot of the doctor, he bumped Steve’s shoulder with his own. 

“They say anything else?”

“They think my… extra energy has something to do with this.” Steve gestured, somehow tired and sardonic at the same time. “No one’s sure of anything, of course. Which makes me-” 

Steve stared at his hands. “I don’t agree with their recommendation, but Fury…”

“Well. The med team tells me I accept their recommendation and see what happens, or I’m benched.” He shrugged, a whole body affair, with a little bounce added in for good measure. “I don’t think I’ll handle being benched all that well.”

No he probably wouldn’t, especially not if he was already back to being jittery enough he was _bouncing_.

“You still don’t have to, you know?” Bucky asked. Steve had… _ideas_ about duty and what they owed SHIELD.

“It’s got some positives,” Steve said, leg jittering, face twisting into a grimace of distaste so extreme it was almost comical. “They’ve booked me an alpha.” 

It shouldn’t have been possible for him to look that sour and blush at the same time. “A pair of alphas, actually. They, ah, think it’s going to be ‘significant’.”

Bucky was practically choking on his own frustration. He was so tired of SHIELD’s bullshit. “Steve, you don’t have to-” 

“No, I know. I know.” Steve drove his hands through his hair, dragging them roughly back and forth a few times.

“I don’t want to talk about this here. But I know I don’t have to, Buck. But you… this sucks on your own.”

“You know I’d help you out.”

“Yeah, Buck, of course. But… well it’s not the same, is it? Not that I don’t thank you - but… you know.”

“Yeah, I get it. So… They know I’m going with you, right? Where are we going? They didn’t, like… arrange for someone here, did they?”

That would be an absolute shit move, ordering some SHIELD alpha to ‘help’. He wouldn’t put it past SHIELD. Even if Steve claimed he was okay with it, Bucky was not going to let that happen. Maybe they could book their own. There were services nowadays, not many but a few. The alpha/omega population combined still only had about the same population frequency as red hair. But there were a few organizations, mostly on the west coast, that helped alphas stuck in rut or omegas in heat.

Neither option sounded all that pleasant to Bucky, but Steve had a point: the alternative was, in fact, worse.

Luckily, Steve shook his head. “Not here.”

“When do they think?” 

Another shrug, but at least this time Steve managed to keep his heels on the floor. “They took some blood. You know how we always throw everything off, never get proper readings. Their best guess is six or seven days.”

“Wow… that’s - wow. Faster than I thought. So, California?” 

Steve looked grim… like he was about to face a firing line.

“California.”

**Author's Note:**

> This journey is only getting started!  
> This WOULD NOT EXIST without: the Glorious ANT_CHAN, The Magnificent betheflame (Pepper), and the Spectacular Juuls (all of these people probably have other user names I will have to edit in here later <3 LOVE)  
> Also, the MHEA Holiday Movie Challenge.


End file.
